Links didn't want to post correctly so I removed them. Check out the original blog post with working links on ButtonSmashing.com. Whenever election day rolls around, politicians and parents start making a lot of noise about the negative effects of video games on the impressionable mind. Every few months or so some stupid kid decides to blame video games for his act of violence or drug use. Why? Most likely because a lawyer tells his parents that it will be the easiest way to get the dumbass out of jail with the least possible penalties. The parents get their brat back sooner. The punk gets out of jail quicker. Lawyers get the fame. Politicians give the appearance that they care about the community. And gamers everywhere get punished by getting tighter restrictions placed on their purchase and even the occasional ban. HOW IN THE WORLD IS THIS FAIR? (The Run-On Summary) Occasionally some misinformed and unfortunately outspoken individual will back you into a corner and force you to defend your hobby for the simple fact that they do not enjoy it and they feel the world would be a better place without it, regardless of the prior history of violence from which society itself has spawned this art form imitating life. I dedicate this blog to them and will direct them to it whenever they shoot-off at the mouth. I always point out the violence in movies and the laughable efforts of the MPAA with their rating restrictions. How many parents don't you see taking their kids into the theater to watch the latest horror movie or adult comedy? Or kids sneaking into theaters. One argument they like to come back with is how video games are more "interactive" and watching murder on screen is different than actually "committing" it in a game. Fine. It does take a little bit more to actually control your character and I have to admit sometimes it takes it to a more personal level, albeit slightly. But does that necessarily create a killer? Scarface. How many perfectly normal and occasionally good father's don't you know that can recite complete scenes from that movie? Or the Godfather? With absolutely no acting experience. Ask them to act in any other movie and I'm willing to bet they will suck badly. So from over-exposure to those violent films their viewers have neither become killers nor actors. I've played the Grand Theft Auto games to death. Don't ask me to recite a single line. Don't ask me to fire an actual weapon. I don't know how to do either. I'm a 30 year old man and I've been playing games as long as I've been able to hold a Joystick. Yes, I said Joystick. One of my favorite games on the Atari 2600 Computer Entertainment System (1977), was a multiplayer game titled Combat. It involved one-on-one battles to the death with tanks and airplanes. Since then I have played games where characters have been killed, mutilated, burned, decapitated, impaled, prostituted and more. All by my hands. Guess what? I'm ok. In fact I'm one of the most blood sensitive guys I know. I can't watch gore without cringing. Some years ago there was a suicide on the 710 Freeway in Los Angeles which was televised in graphic detail. They interrupted children's cartoons to show this. I was entertaining my now Godson and watched the whole thing covering his eyes the whole time and frantically looking for the remote. I was already a young adult and according to all the "research" after all the violent video games I have played in depth, I should not have been phased by what I saw. Needless to say I was deeply disturbed and remember the morbid details to this day. Kids, it's illegal to buy a game that is not rated for you. Politicians, keep your noses to what you know. Parents, do your job and stop pointing fingers.

Check it out on YouTube and please remember to rate me, and rate me well. :D  Please rate and comment.  Don't forget to wait until the bitter, tone-deaf end for a special little clip.

It goes by quickly because I had so many dang pictures....I sacrificed so many too. :(

GTA: San Andreas was a game created only for adults that included scenes of graphic murder and brutal beatings. No problem.

Then it was found out that using some external resources you can play a sex mini game that was originally removed from the retail version.

____________________|                                            ||   Decapitations == OK!   ||                                            ||Copulation == NO WAY!||--------------------------------|| ||

That got me thinking, "How insensitive have I become?"  What could I possibly play that I would feel bad doing?  Or what game content would offend me to the point that I would no longer want to play?

Where would you draw the line?

Would the context of taboo content affect your opinion?  Or when that content is included in the game.  Because some of the more harsh topics have already been in games if not hinted at.

Remember that really bad voyeur game with Dano Plato from Diff'rent Strokes?  She gets raped right?

Even child molestation is hinted at in the Lucas Arts game Outlaws.

Beating of women...hmm... play any fighting game and you'll see girls slapped around relentlessly.

So these actions COULD occur in games, they'd just have to be appropriate?

Because seriously, nothing gets me as angry as the thought of any type of molestation or abuse and if there is an enemy character that does any of those things it is much more likely to get me riled up enough to chop him to bits. (Hitman.)

My point?

Are games that different from movies?  Because in movies there has yet to be any taboo topic.  They even touch on the ever controverisal religious subjects.

The funny thing is that I can definitely see a game covering much more religiously controversial topics with less media fanfare than a movie.  At the opposite end of the spectrum, however; movies can depict graphic scenes of sex and rape and still get rave reviews.  Games will never reach that level of freedom in this arena.

Could it be because they still consider videogames to be geared towards children?

Perhaps they need to stop making silly shaped and colorful consoles and make them more like the rest of the components of our entertainment centers.

This is not the answer of course, but a step in the right direction.

What else do you think would help?

I was recently docked a few points for referring people here so they could check out my blog and comment on my Halo 3 daydream.  Which I did simply because I wasn't getting any response.  Any response at all.  Helloooo?  Is anybody there?  It's me, Margaret.

Since it was within GameSpot itself I sincerely didn't think there would be a problem.  Apparently there was.

So now I'm going to the opposite.  I went through the trouble of copying, reformatting and relinking the entire blogs into forums.  Hopefully this won't cost me some more points.

I posted the DS Lite blog here.

I posted the Halo 3 Daydream here.

So I did a little hunting.  What's the harm in that?  I didn't lie, I didn't steal.  I just found the right person to ask working for the right company.  It's not my fault they were uninformed.

Is it unfair to everyone else that is waiting?

You could see it that way, I guess. What it truly boils down to, however; isn't about who deserves it more but who wants it the most and works hardest to obtain it.  Some people choose to wait in line to watch Star Wars movies, you shouldn't get to go in before them just because you own the theater.

My point?  I'm sure you've all noticed the employee's themselves usually get their systems and games early.  I paid the full price and I really don't think I'm taking it away from someone else.  I was going to buy it anyway and it was in stock.  I actually had a GameStop employee chastize me for having my DS-Lite already.  To which I responded, "What is the difference between selling the system early and taking reservations for it?"  He replied and said that it was more fair to the consumers who waited.  I told him it was only fair if you announced the reservation date and not kept it on the "down-low" because Nintendo doesn't even support the reservation system.  Since they can't officially announce the reservation date they take them when they are available.  They don't discriminate either.  They take them from whoever is lucky enough to walk into the store on that specific random day and asks about it. 

Just like me.  Had I walked into the store on the date of its official release it is completely possible that I might not have gotten my hands on it if they sold out.

How exactly is that fair?  I think to be truly fair to the consumer they need to abolish release dates altogether.  Get it out as soon as possible.  In stock, sold!  Whoever is closest to the manufacturing plant gets it first because the shipment arrives there quicker.  As long as they get a fair amount of systems distrubuted to all locations then we're good.  I can wait a week or two to get mine.

The consumers that are most excited about the product are the ones looking around for it, asking about it and constantly calling retailers.  They should be rewarded for their loyalty by getting their systems and games when they become available.

I'm not saying the reservation system won't work either, it most definitely could.  I just think that until Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo start taking the reservations themselves it will never be executed fairly.  I always see GameStop and EBGames employee's giving their "homies" hook-ups and holding things for themselves.  This is one of the largest video game retailers I know.  What do you think is happening in the mom and pop shops?

Click here for a picture of my New DS-Lite, don't be mad.

Sometimes while playing a game I'm particularily excited about, I like to visualize how I would like to see it. In my mind I like to make it more cinematic, usually going far beyond what the current technology would allow. I will share with you what was going through my mind right after I watched the Halo 3 announcement trailer during the Microsoft conference. What Cortana said was "I have defied gods, and demons. I am your shield, I am your sword. I know you, your past, your future. This is the way the world ends." I imagine it is the Gravemind of the Flood using Cortana to communicate with the Master Chief in the only way that he can. The scene shown at E3, in my personal opinion, was a possibility. The Gravemind was showing the Master Chief a possible future. If that object in the center of the crater fires, life as we know it will end. "This is the way the world ends." The way the actual event plays out (in my mind.) Starting the Fight After viewing the event shown to him by the Gravemind, the Master Chief arrives on the Halo construction planet long abandoned by the Forerunners. Worn and exhausted after single-handedly (naturally) fighting off hundreds of enemies a Spartan arrives at the crater seen in the Master Chief's influenced dreams. The camera shows you a slightly different scene. THOUSANDS of Grunts, Jackals, Brutes and other followers of the mistaken Prophets cover the basin. They wait on vehicles and huge animals. They are holding a defense while the Prophets prepare to activate the device. You get a sense of urgency in the way the Spartan jumps off the cliff and runs head on towards the massive army. The scene cuts to the view from a sniper scope trailing the Spartans slippery descent down the edge of the steep cliff. Dust trails him all the way down. Reaching the bottom and regaining his composure, the Spartan starts running and duel wielding right at the sniper scope. The scope zooms in and hits the Spartan right in the neck dropping him like a heavy rock face first into the dirt for a gruesome neck-cracking, grinding stop. The scene is now the Spartan's view. His viewscreen intermittent static. Fading and black. The Spartan is dead. The camera is panning clockwise around the Spartan's dead body and the impressively heavy streak he left in the dirt. In the background of the same scene you can see the Jackal that killed him move from his position and turn his back to the Spartan, job complete. As the camera continues to rotate with the dead Spartan still in view the angle moves so you can see up the cliff. It begins to rise leaving the body of the Spartan behind. On the camera's climb pebbles fall down past the screen as you continue to rise towards the blinding light of the sun. When you reach the edge of the precipice you see what caused those rocks to fall. The foot of another Spartan. The Master Chief. He is kneeling at the edge of the cliff and after checking out the scene with his sniper rifle he quickly picks off three other Jackals in quick succession. He rises to his feet and the camera stays below looking up at him with the sun right behind him. The camera slowly rises as he lowers his rifle and raises his left arm as if to signal something. His hand up in the air he quickly points it forward. Back at the Covenant camp you see them panicking. The shaky camera seems to be following the group. Everyone is running away. There is dust, chaos and betrayal as every one of the grunts and other Covenant fight for the vehicles and weapons needed to survive. The camera still running is pushed off a ghost by a Brute. Apparently dismayed by this turn of events the camera quickly pans back the to cliff to the origin of fear. Amidst a cloud of smoke comes an army of newly trained Spartans numbering in the hundreds. Warthogs and all in a full Blitz attack right through the middle of the Covenant defense. Slow motion as first contact is made. Brutes shot from afar. Grunts blown up into the sky by huge explosions. Bloodshed like that of Normandy. A new enemy, large and fast moving runs through the crowd of shooters and slices through a Spartan with a variation of the energy sword. More metallic, seemingly more solid. You see visible damage as the Spartan says "Damn" in a female voice and grabs at chestplate now leaking blood and sparks. She drops to her knees as the camera focuses on her. The background blurs and seems to gain distance. Time seems to slow down again as we see this Covenant assasin taking down Spartans in the background. While this is happening the Spartan removes her helmet and her long hair drops giving it more significance as a human loss. The camera follows her head horizontally as it slams into the ground. Top of the cliff. A dropship blasts over the cliff towards a barrage of shots and missiles. The Master Chief jumps out just in time as the ship is hit by two missiles simultaneously and a third as its exploding. He assumes his typical skydiving pose as the camera remains below him all the way down right into the heat of the battle. He crashes hard into a Wraith demolishing it. After a few seconds, scratched and bleeding, he climbs out. A scarab rises behind him. The Master Chief's flaming dropship slams right onto the scarab in a fantastically blinding explosion profiling the Master Chief in a blanket of fire. He reloads. "Let's go." -=====================================- So what do you guys think?

When I first agreed to work on ButtonSmashing.com, it was done with the hopes of not making a profit but doing it for the the fun of it and at least breaking even. So far it looks like that is not going to happen. It costs me $100 a year to keep the site up and running. In seven months we have generated just under $20. I greatly appreciate the small but loyal group of readers I have. Thank you very much for trying hard. It was fun. Now it’s just a long, dry run until November when the site comes down. I’ll try to keep it as entertaining as possible until then. Perhaps that will allow more time for me to dedicate myself to generating new traffic to the MySpace group which appears to be withering from lack of participation. HL

Nintendo is releasing a new version of their DS system with a smaller form factor, a brighter screen, larger stylus and longer lasting battery. There are some reports rumbling that the DSLite is being released early by some retailers. Target has been named as one of those locations. It is not official but seems to be due to employee ignorance. Walk in with the company part number and they reportedly give it to you. I'm going to give it a shot today. I will let you know.

I finally got back to work after that chaotic Rosarito weekend. I just uploaded the pictures from the Microsoft event on ButtonSmashing. Be sure to check them out and comment on the site to let me know what you think. Should I continue to bother or just quit while I'm ahead? I played that Hitman demo. It seems pretty cool. I've never played any game in the series so I didn't know what to expect. Some of the characters are pretty stiff, targeting is a little awkward but not impossible and the delayed attack scheme sure is different. Even though it does leave you feeling guilty on many different levels, It is a fun game. Not sure I'd pay $60 for it myself though.

What better way to coordinate lanfests and connect to people over XBox Live than with a map. The closer we are to each other, but the more reliable the connection right? (Theoretically.) Add yourselves and let the mutiplayer chaos begin. : )